2012 Contract Issues: Toronto Blue Jays

The Jays seemingly took Juan Rivera from the Angels as a means of facilitating the Vernon Wells trade. In February they were rumored to be shopping him. If he's still struggling a few months from now a release could be in order.

Frank Francisco is expected to join the big league club today after dealing with pectoral muscle and shoulder issues. Health is always a concern for Francisco. Though his salary is already at $4MM, I can still see the Jays offering arbitration if a draft pick is involved.

I'm curious to see whether Shawn Camp has Type A or B status, once Eddie Bajek starts projecting Elias rankings this year.

Aaron Hill: $8MM club option for 2012, $8MM club option for '13. It's too early to say whether Hill can return to his '09 or '07 form and compel the Jays to pick up one or both of his options.

Jason Frasor: $3.75MM club option. Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos created flexibility for his 2012 bullpen by getting club options for Frasor, Rauch, and Dotel in the same range. After the season we'll see who's worth keeping around.

The first-timers won't necessarily make it to the point of being tendered contracts. Escobar, Morrow, Litsch, Villanueva, and Janssen seem to be the locks here.

2012 Payroll Obligation

The Blue Jays' 2012 payroll obligation excluding buyouts is $29.9MM, according to Cot's. Jose Bautista, Adam Lind, and Ricky Romero account for most of that. The club options are mostly unknowns at this point; the obligation could range from a couple million for buyouts to $22.5MM if everyone stays. I'll use $15MM as a ballpark figure for the key arbitration eligible players, putting the team around $47MM if all options are declined. The Blue Jays have kept payroll over $70MM for quite some time, so there's room to exercise some of the options and join the bidding for a few significant free agents.

Depending on how well Francisco pitches, I could see AA offering arb to all relief pitchers and go for the picks. If francisco can establish himself as a dominante closer, I could see them locking him up.

The major problem with the Jays as I see it is they need to get E5 off of 3B as soon as possible and Nix is not the solution. Also, they need a guy beside Bautista that will take a walk. Really they are a bunch of hackers up there.

To be fair, they’ve faced some tough pitching. We should’ve been better against Boston but let’s face it, they weren’t continually going to pitch and bat horribly. They were dead last in ERA before the series so they were to pitch well.

A little surprised Jays haven’t hit as many homeruns. They hit a good bunch in their home games but they’ve gone extremely cold on the road.

I am happy they are walking a lot more now. I saw them at #1 in steals as well few days ago.

Personally, I think our defense has been a big let down. It seems like every game we’re making errors and a lot of them are on routine plays.

Now, I haven’t seen what the errors were like, but based on the state alone, it looks to me like he’s more than a month away from figuring out how to play 3 base consistantly. I think he sould be a september call up at the earliest.

Well, I don’t know what games you’ve seen, but in the limited action I’ve seen him in he’s far better than EE. I never said he was great (or even good), but with the ascension Lawrie is making through the organization (and the state of the team) I expect Lawrie to be coming up in September. Until then, I’m perfectly happy to see anyone but EE at 3B.

One possibility is that Litsch is only being sent down to create the immediate space for Francisco and allow the jays to rock an 8 man bullpen to try and deal with the taxation on it. Litsch might not even miss his next start. His demotion might only be for a few days until they decide what they want to do when Morrow returns. (ex. DFA JoJo, send Perez back to AAA, and bring Litsch back up in time for his next start).